Alternative Religion/ Library

CHAPTER VI   THE CHURCH FORGERY MILL

“Nevertheless, the forging of papal letters was even more frequent in the Middle Ages than in the early Church.” (CE. ix, 203.)

The record which we shall now expose is the most sordid in human annals,—of frauds and forgeries perpetrated for the base purposes of greed for worldly riches and power, and designed so to paralyze and stultify the minds and reason of men that they should suffer themselves to be exploited without caring or daring to question or complain, and be helpless to resist the crimes committed against them. Into this chapter we shall compress in as summary manner as possible the revolting record of Christian fraud by means of forged title deeds to vast territories, forged documents of ecclesiastical power spiritual and temporal, forged and false Saints, Martyrs, ‘Miracles' and Relics—surpassing the power of imagination or accomplishment by any other than a divinely inspired Church which “has never deceived anyone,” and which “never has erred”—in its profound, cynical knowledge and exploitation of the degraded depths of ignorance and superstition to which it had sunk its victims, and of their mental and moral incapacity to detect the holy frauds worked upon them. This was the glorious Age of Faith—the Dark Ages of human benightedness and priestly thralldom—when Holy Church was the Divinely-illumined and unique Teacher of Christendom, and when the Christian world was too ignorant to be unbelieving or heretic,—for “unbelief is no sin that ignorance was ever capable of being guilty of.”

In those “Dark Ages, as the period of Catholic ascendancy is justly called” (Lecky, History of European Morals, ii, 14), “men were credulous and ignorant,” says Buckle; “they therefore produced a religion which required great belief and little knowledge.” Again he says: “The only remedy for superstition is knowledge. ... Nothing else can wipe out that plague-spot of the human mind.” It was, indeed, agrees CE.—(from 432 to 1461)—“an age of terrible corruption and social decadence” (xiv, 318); and of its mental state it says: “To such an extent had certain imaginary concepts become the common property of the people, that they repeated themselves as auto-suggestions and dreams.” (CE. ix, 130.) But exactly this period—the “Dark Ages of Catholic ascendancy,” ¹⁹⁶ —with centuries before and since, was the heyday of Holy Faith and Holy Church: it may well be wondered who was responsible for such conditions, when only Holy Church existed, in plentitude of power, the inspired Teacher of Christendom? During all these centuries, “the overwhelming importance attached to theology diverted to it all those intellects which in another condition of society would have been employed in the investigations of science.” (Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, i, 275; ef. Bacon, Novum Organum, I, 89.) What else could be expected, was possible, when “a bountyless intolerance of all divergences of opinion was united with an equally boundless toleration of all falsehood and deliberate fraud that could favor received opinions?” (Lecky, History of European Morals, ii, 15.) Indeed, “few people realize the degree in which these superstitions were encouraged by the Church which claims infallibility.” (Lecky, Hist. Rationalism, i, 79, n.) It is confessed: “The Church is tolerant of ‘pious beliefs' which have halved to further Christianity”! (CE. xix,341.) 

THE FORGED APOSTOLIC CONSTITUTIONS

 For more than a thousand years, until their fraud was exposed by modern historical criticism, these voluminous and most commodious forgeries formed the groundwork and foundation of some of the most extravagant pretensions of the Church and its most potent instrument of establishment and dominion of its monarchical government The Apostolic Constitutions, which we have admitted for naivete of invention with respect to the Apostolic Prince Peter and Simon Magus in their magic contests in Rome, is in fact “a fourth-century pseudo-Apostolic collection. ... It purports to be the work of the Apostles, whose instructions, whether given by them individually or as a body, are supposed to be gathered and handed down by the pretended compiler, [Pope] St. Clement of Rome, the authority of whose name gave fictitious weight to more than one such piece of early Christian literature. ... The Apostolic Constitutions were held generally in high esteem and served as the basis for much ecclesiastical legislation. ... As late as 1563 ... despite the glaring archaisms and incongruities of the collection it was contended that it was the genuine work of the Apostles ... could yet pretend, in an uncritical age, to Apostolic origin.” (CE. i, 636.)

 The Constitutions, pretending to be written by the apostles, laid down in minute detail all the intricacies of organization of several centuries later; there being elaborate chapters “concerning bishops,” presbyters, deacons, all kinds of clergy, liturgies, and Church proceedings and services, undreamed of by “apostles,” or in the “apostolic age.” The prescriptions regarding the selection of bishops are quite democratic, and vastly different from present papal practices; the Churches, too, are distinctly episcopal and independent. The nature of these provisions, as well as the grossly false and fraudulent character of the whole, a vast arsenal of papal aggression, may be seen by the following passage in the apostolic first person: “Wherefore we, the twelve apostles of the Lord, who are now together, give you in charge those divine constitutions concerning every ecclesiastical form, there being present with us Paul, the chosen vessel, our fellow apostle, and James the bishop, and the rest of the presbyters, and the seven ¹⁹⁷ deacons. In the first place, therefore, I Peter say, that a bishop to be ordained is to be, as we have already, all of us, appointed, ... chosen by the whole people, who, when he is named and approved, let the people assemble, with the presbyters and bishops that are present, on the Lord's day, and let them give their consent. ... And if they give their consent,” etc. (Apost. Const. VIII, 2, iv; ANF. vii, 481-482.) 

THE FORGED “APOSTOLIC CANONS”

 From the same pious forging hand, says CE. (i, 637), comes the related Apostolic Canons (composed about 400), “a collection of ancient ecclesiastical decrees concerning the government and discipline of the Church; ... in a word, they are a handy summary of the statutory legislation of the primitive Church. ... The claim to be the very legislation of the Apostles themselves, at least as promulgated by their great disciple Clement. Nevertheless, their claim to genuine Apostolic origin is quite false and untenable. ... The text passed into Pseudo-Isidore, and eventually Gratian included (about 1140) some excerpts of these canons in his ‘Decretum,' whereby a universal recognition and use were gained for them in the law schools. At a much earlier date, Justinian (in his sixth Novel) had recognized them as the work of the Apostles, and confirmed them as ecclesiastical law.” (CE. iii, 279, 280.) Here the pious priests of God palmed off these self-serving forgeries on the great but superstitious Emperor and fraudulently secured their enactment into imperial law. In the same article is a description of “a larger number of forged documents appearing about the middle of the ninth century,” among which “the Capitula of Benedict Levita, Capitula Angilrammi, Canons of Isaac of Langres,—above all the collection of Pseudo-Isidore” (Ib. 285), which arch-forgery we shall describe in its turn. 

THE FORGED LIBER PONTIFICALIS

This famous, or infamous, official fabrication, “The Book of the Popes,” is notorious for its spurious accounts of the early and mythical “successors of St. Peter.” The Liber Pontificalis purports to be “a history of the popes, beginning with St. Peter and continued down to the fifteenth century, in the form of biographies” of their respective Holinesses of Rome. (CE. ix, 224.) It is an official papal work, written and kept in the papal archives, and preserves for posterity the holy lives and wonderful doings of the heads of the Church universal. “Historical criticism,” says CE., “has for a long time dealt with this ancient text in an exhaustive way ... especially in recent decades.” The Liber starts off in a typically fraudulent clerical manner: “In most of its manuscript copies there is found at the beginning a spurious correspondence between Pope Damasus and St. Jerome. These letters were considered genuine in the Middle Ages. ... Duchesne has proved exhaustively and convincingly that the first series of biographies, from St. Peter to Felix III (IV, died 530) were compiled at the latest under Felix's successor, Boniface II (530-532). ... The compiler of the Liber Pontificalis utilized also some historical writings, a number of apocryphal fragments (e.g. the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions), the Constitutum Sylvestri, the spurious Acts of the alleged Synod of the 275 Bishops under ¹⁹⁸ Sylvester, etc., and the fifth century Roman Acts of Martyrs. Finally, the compiler distributed arbitrarily along his list of popes a number of papal decrees taken from unauthentic sources, he likewise attributed to earlier popes liturgical and disciplinary regulations of the sixth century. ... The authors were Roman ecclesiastics, and some were attached to the Roman Court.” (CE. ix, 225.) The general falsity of the Liber is again shown and the fraudulent use made of it by the later Church forgers, thus indicated: For instances, “in the ‘Liber' it is recorded that such a pope issued a decree that has been lost, or mislaid, or perhaps never existed at all. Isidore seized the opportunity to supply a pontifical letter suitable for the occasion, attributing it to the pope whose name was mentioned in the ‘Liber.”' (CE. v. 774.) Thus confessed forgery and fraud taint to the core this basic record for some five centuries of the official “histories” and Acts of Their Holinesses of the primitive and adolescent years of the Holy Church. Pope Peter and his “Successors” for a century or more are thus again proven pious fictions and frauds. 

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